1. Field of the Invention
The exemplary embodiment(s) of the present invention relates to a field of taxi-sharing system. More specifically, the exemplary embodiment(s) of the present invention relates to a dynamic taxi-sharing system and a sharing method thereof capable of fuel-saving and pollution-reducing.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) has been regarded as an emerging and promising field because it can provide safety and more efficient roads for passengers. In VANET, each vehicle can detect neighboring traffic conditions by on-board sensor units and exchange the detected information via vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to road (V2R) communication, disclosed by Bo Yu, J. Y Gong, and C. Z Xu, “Catch-UP: A Data Aggregation Scheme for VANETs,” in Proceedings of the fifth ACM international workshop on VehiculAr Inter-NETworking (VANET'08), pp. 49-57, September 2008 and by H. Z Zhu, Y. M Zhu, M. L Li, and Lionel M. Ni “SEER: Metropolitan-scale Traffic Perception Based on Lossy Sensory Data,” in Proceedings of the 28th Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM '09), pp. 217-225, April 2009. ITS adds information and communications technology (VANET) to traditional transport infrastructure so it can estimate the real-time traffic condition on roads and provide services like navigation and trip planning to improve driving efficiency.
However, the traffic congestion problem in urban area of many countries cannot be solved completely by adopting ITS due to the high density of private vehicles and a traffic jam also brings economic and environmental impacts, such as fuel consumption. So, a carpooling service is proposed to reduce the use of private cars. Carpoolers use pool members' private cars, or a jointly hired vehicle, for private shared journeys. The traditional carpooling service partially reduce the amount of private cars and the efficient way to mitigate the traffic congestion problem in urban area is to use public transportation, such as bus, Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), and taxi.
Traditional carpooling service usually requires human coordination and asks carpoolers to specify their ride-sharing routes on the web beforehand, and the ride-matching server will find the most suitable partners for each route after a period of time, disclosed in Quality carpool Service, which makes service inflexible. On the contrary, the ride-sharing service performs a carpooling match automatically and rapidly for approval by travelers. In Taiwan, a project for ride-sharing services also shows that taxi-sharing service is most suitable ride-sharing service in urban area, disclosed by C. C. Tao, S. H. Chang, F. Y. Shyr, H. M. Chiu, H. C. Lee, C. C. Hung, C. J. Tsai, et. al., “Deployment of High Occupancy Vehicle Project using ITS Technologies-A Demonstration on Car/Ride Sharing System in Urban Area (Phase I)”, Final report (in Chinese), MOTC, Taiwan, 2005. A research survey on taxi industry also shows that taxi-sharing service can achieve not only fuel-saving but also pollution-reducing, disclosed by S. Hartwig, M. Buchmann, “Empty Seats Traveling: Next-generation Ridesharing and its Potential to Mitigate Traffic- and mission problems in the 21th Century”, Nokia Research center Bochum, Feb. 14, 2007.
However, traffic congestion problem is still a tough issue for all the cities. Thus, for the demand, designing a dynamic taxi-sharing system and a sharing method thereof to reduce economic and environmental impact has become an urgent issue for the application in the market.